ABSTRACT
We begin by positing the question: ‘can dialectical thinking lead to any insights into our network society, and, if so, what can they tell us about the nature and function of media in that society?’ The Platonic dialectic touched upon in Part I of this book proceeded through the dialogue of reasoned argument oriented towards the search for truth. Here we take up the new life given to the dialectical process of the Classical conception that emerged through Hegel, who argued in terms of a dialectic of social change where ‘everything is inherently contradictory’ in society (1969: 439). In this view it is the effect of the tensions emanating from these contradictions that give society (and history) its motive force, moving it forward, always seeking resolutions to its own contradictions, but creating only more contradictions in the process. In particular, we take up the critique of Hegel’s thought by Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, which conceived the dialectic more as a materially derived process. In contrast to Hegel, they viewed it more negatively and critically in relation to the workings and logic of capitalist modernity: a dialectic, in other words, that is the modality for the ‘study of the immediate cultural, economic and political life-worlds of “Western democracies”’ (Vouros 2014: 174).
